Creating Radio Stations

[u/TexugoDoMel17]

Why is Apple Music SO BAD at understanding musical style when creating a radio station based on a single song? It’s frustrating and makes me want to stop using the service.
Here’s an example: I ask it to create a radio station based on “Tiny Dancer” by Elton John. And Apple Music’s so-called supreme intelligence comes up with this sequence: “Under Pressure” (Queen), “New Rules” (Dua Lipa), “Perfect” (Ed Sheeran), “Your Song” (Elton John), “Smooth Criminal” (MJ)…

WHAT THE %#^*+= IS THE LOGIC BEHIND THIS SEQUENCE? And why does this keep happening? How can this experience be improved? My experience with Apple Music has been very frustrating!!!! It’s always like this!

For comparison, I asked ChatGPT to create a radio station based on “Tiny Dancer.” It understood exactly the kind of musical experience I was looking for:
Tiny Dancer — Elton John
Just the Way You Are — Billy Joel
Dreams — Fleetwood Mac
Ventura Highway — America
Piano Man — Billy Joel
Peaceful Easy Feeling — Eagles
The Logical Song — Supertramp
My Sweet Lord — George Harrison
The River — Bruce Springsteen
Your Song — Elton John

Based on just one song, ChatGPT understood the FEELING I wanted the music to evoke.

Lately, I’ve been absolutely fed up with Apple Music because of how TERRIBLE the user experience has become!

[u/Key_Elk_6671]

So, there’s something to understand about how Apple Music creates stations, vs playlists, etc.

“Create a station” stations, like your mood stations, and personal and discover stations are not just based on the songs you use to create them, but also your personal listening history. Because of this, everyone here will get a fairly different sampling of songs when creating a station based on “Tiny Dancer.” While the songs it picked may not fit the mood you are particularly looking for when creating that station, they are likely songs you would listen to at other times; the primary goal of the customized stations Apple creates is to find songs it thinks you will enjoy.

Elton John is an artist who’s popularity and relevance has encompassed far more eras of music than most, and so the magnetism for other genres/generations of songs is going to be wider than many other artists; in general making stations for artists/songs that are very popular with larger swathes of people and tastes will yield more general results.

Like with any station on Apple Music, however, I have found that being liberal with quick skipping can help you tailor the vibe the station is in. For example, when I made this station, the next song was as Hello by Adele. This makes sense in genre, but not necessarily era. I skipped immediately, and then got Chicago, Phil Collins, and The Beach Boys, all a little closer to the era you might be looking for.

If you want Apple Music to have a more core focus on a station, you will have better luck going to the New tab, scrolling to the bottom, and choosing either “Browse by Genre,” “Decades,” or “Moods and Activities.” Once you have found the category that best fits your mood, scroll until you find the “Stations” carousel, and choose an applicable station. These general stations are not customized to the user, and feature a set pool of songs to play from.

But that’s relying purely on stations, what you’re looking for is better served with playlists on Apple Music. First of all, Apple Music has some of the best curated playlists in the business, the biggest trouble is finding them. For a use case like yours, the best way is to go the the album that the song you want to get more like is from, in this instance, “Madman Across the Water,” and scroll down below the tracklist. There often will be a “Featured On” carousel of playlists, which feature one or more songs from that album on it. As a classic album, obviously, there are more options here than is typical; I’d recommend ‘70’s Singer-Songwriter Essentials,” or “70’s Rock Essentials,” in your case.

Another great tool, if you’re on iOS, and specific territories, is to make use of the newer “Playlist Playground” feature, which lets you create an AI influenced playlist, similar to your ChatGPT example. This can be entered directly from the “create new playlist” command within the library. I entered “Songs like Tiny Dancer” as my prompt, and received a playlist it called “Elton John’s ‘70’s Piano Rock Harmony,” which contained several songs similar to what you are looking for. This feature also allows you to make edits to the song, add additional prompts, for example “add 80’s songs too.”

If you are not on a device, or in a region that currently supports Playlist Playground, you can also start a playlist the traditional way, by adding “Tiny Dancer,” and maybe two or three other songs you know fit your mood, and then the older playlist system will offer suggestions to add to the playlist beneath the tracklist. YMMV on the quality of these suggestions, but it might yield decent results.

Hopefully this helps, if you didn’t already know about how some of these features actually work, and you can best get what you want out of Apple Music!

*Edited to add some clarifications on how to use some playlist features.

[u/NovelYou3875]

I honestly think that the Apple station is so much better.

[u/modsuperstar → u/NovelYou3875]

I agree. It’s trying to expose music in the modern adult contemporary vein. Elton John is someone who’s done songs with many contemporary artists, including Dua Lipa and Ed Sheeran. You don’t think they’re connected, but they are quite directly. Meanwhile ChatGPT is providing the musical depth of a puddle by lumping Elton John with 1970s contemporaries, with songs you probably could have listed off the top of your head.

[u/Bear-Handed-92262]

I think it's gotten a lot better, but this was my complaint for years. I would start with something like Ella Fitzgerald, and within three songs it was playing Madonna. Start with B-52s and within three songs it was playing Elton John (almost always Rocket Man).

[u/wskisour]

Def biggest frustration using AM vs Spotify
The algo doesn’t seem to account for the musicality and mood of individual tracks; just thinks genre artist and era in broad strokes

[u/Key_Elk_6671 → u/wskisour]

For better or worse, I think it’s honestly mostly about user listening statistics, which is the biggest sampling of data that Apple regularly has access to, and also can attribute to their track ID’s. Basically, “60% of users who listen to ‘Tiny Dancer’ also listen to these 20 tracks regularly.” On paper, that’s a system that makes a lot of sense, but in practice can give a lot of popularity bias. Just about EVERYONE listens to Elton John at some point, so the data for tracks that are also listened to is going to be really generalized, and seem just like a list of popular songs.

But on Apple Music if you make stations based off of some more niche genres, like say chiptune electronic, fusion jazz, etc, you’ll end up with a really good and authentic station to that genre, because the sample set of users who listen to those tracks is much smaller, and they listen to a lot of good similar music, because niche fans tend to already know what’s good in the genre.

I think improvements are being made, especially with the Playlist Playgroup feature, which seems to use a much more nuanced data set regarding music history and theory, but it’s not yet being applied to the create a station feature. Up until now, I think that Apple has honestly felt they should rely on what they see as their strength in discovery, which is their human curated playlists, put together by hired music experts. I believe that’s absolutely been a fair tactic, except that in recent years so many people are coming from other services, and have been taught to rely on Autoplay features at the push of a button, rather than taking the time to browse the pages and find playlists that speak to them.

[u/Drbuckles55]

This is what Spotify came up with

[u/Drbuckles55 → u/Drbuckles55]

[u/No-Truth404]

It js hard to get a decent stream of random songs from AM - something you’d listen to for an hour with no skips.

I made an app, StationBox. You list the artists you want to hear and it plays random songs from only those artists. It can suggest artists but you have to add them.

It is an experiment but I find I like it. I make genre stations that can be super niche (80s British synth pop is a favorite) or throw in a mix of artists I want to try.

[u/thecrazycoolestcat → u/No-Truth404]

It has your own user station which will play for hours without playing something you don't like (as long as you've given it some info about your taste via library adds, favorites, plays)